Am dritten Tag sprechen Lida und Patrick über Charline Bourgeois-Tacquets Wettbewerbstitel La vie d'une femme, stellen sich die Frage, ob wahre Fußballfans in Juan Cabral and Santiago Francos The Match noch etwas Neues über die legendäre Viertelfinalpartie 1986 zwischen England und Argentinien lernen können, und werfen mit We Are Aliens einen Blick auf einen der traditionell eher rar gesähten Animationsfilme in Cannes.
In der ersten Podcast-Episode von den Filmfestspielen von Cannes sprechen Lida, Jakob und Patrick über Pierre Salvadoris The Electric Kiss, der das Festival eröffnete, sowie Butterfly Jam, das heißersehnte Comeback des im amerikanischen Exil lebenden russischen Wunderkinds Kantemir Balagov, sowie Nagi Notes, mit dem der Japaner Koji Fukada erstmals im Wettbewerb von Cannes vertreten ist.
Since he took over the most prominent parallel section of the Cannes Film Festival three years ago, the Quinzaine des cinéastes, formerly known as Quinzaine des réalisateurs, has both sharpened its profile as aplatform for cinematic discoveries and its status as a forum for prominent artists beyond the mainstream. Under the artistic direction of Julien Rejl, the Directors' Fortnight claims to strive to increase diversity and champion singular artistic voices, despite the omnipresent pressure of commercialization and uniformity. Before the opening ceremony initiates this year's edition, Julien Rejl sat down with Lidanoir to talk about Cannes' conflicting impulses of artistic equality and economic elitism, the dynamic between the festival's different sections, and what makes this year's program unique.
It has been two decades since his charming feature debut Waking Ned Devine became an international surprise success. Since then, Kirk Jones has only directed a handful of films, the last one about ten years ago. But I Swear was worth the wait. With empathy and eccentric humor, the biopic of Scottish Tourette activist John Davidson shows his difficult youth with the illness. Back in the '80s where the story is set, Tourette's was little known and even less understood. That this has changed is also thanks to Davidson, with whom the director worked closely. When presenting his film in Berlin, Jones found time for an interview with Lidanoir about taking financial risks to realize his project, helping to create Robert Aramayo's BAFTA-winning
Already his fictional feature debut Suicide Room earned him a name with audiences and critics. His daring drama Corpus Christi premiered at the Berlinale and received an Oscar nomination for best foreign film. In his first English-language feature, Jan Komasa once again tests audiences' moral boundaries with a provocative premise that blends psycho thriller with social satire and dark humor. Good Boy has a young delinquent kidnapped by an afluent family whose patriarch wants to condition him into becoming their perfect son. In an interview with Lidanoir, the Polish director discusses the sinister comedy‘s themes of class and violent rehabilitation, taking the audience out of their comfort zone, and Stephen Graham's reaction to his role.
War, patriarchal structures, and the absence of an established local film industry couldn’t hold Suzannah Mirghani back from realizing her first feature film which is a special kind of debut: the first fiction feature from Sudan directed by a woman and only the second Sudanese feature production to screen at the Venice Film Festival. From there Cotton Queen went on a prestigious festival journey, earning prizes at Thessaloniki, Geneva, Doha, and Luxor. The nuanced story of a Sudanese teenage girl’s emancipation against the backdrop of her village’s complicated past and uncertain future is now in German cinemas. During its screening at the Arabic Film Festival Berlin, the Sudanese-Russian filmmaker spoke with Lidanoir about the Sudanese war’s impact on the production, overcoming moral skepticism about young women acting, and the return of colonialist capitalism in a globalized world.
What happens when nature is reduced to a problem that needs solving and a capitalizable attraction at once? Gabriela Osio Vanden and Jack Weisman explore that question in their captivating feature documentary debut, taking a close look at the relationship between humans and polar bears in Churchill, Manitoba. Its status is complicated in the proclaimed Polar Bear Capital of the World, where the awe-inspiring animals venture close to residential areas. After winning Sundance’s US Documentary Competition with its breathtaking footage and nuanced approach to the conflict between human interests and animal preservation, Nuisance Bear screens at Visions du Réel. Here, the filmmakers talk with Lidanoir about coming close, but not too close, to polar bears, capturing never-before-seen wildlife images, and earning the trust of the local communities.
Social pressure, professional strains, and emotional tension come together in Viv Li’s personal and disarmingly humorous portrait of herself at a crossroads. Witty and visually arresting, her feature documentary debut finds the universal in individual issues and vice versa while meditating on identity, insecurity, and ideals. Just a couple of weeks after premiering at the Berlinale and MoMA’s ND/NF forum, Two Mountains Weighing Down My Chest comes to Visions du Réel’s main competition. Before heading to her next screening in New York, the Chinese filmmaker based in Berlin spoke with Lidanoir about the detailed development process, the challenges aspiring filmmakers face, and finding the humor in everyday events.
In a world shaped by militarized conflict and displacement, Janay Boulos and Abd Alkader Habak manage to find the love that overcomes violence and repression - on a personal and a cinematic level. Both come together in their intimate chronicle of a romance against all odds. Birds of War tells their very own love story during the Syrian Civil War and the Lebanese war, witnessing the devastation and brutal impact on people's lives but also moments of unexpected beauty. After premiering at Sundance where it won the prestigious Special Jury Award for its journalistic impact, the moving documentary is now at Visions du Réel. On site in Nyon, the filmmakers spoke with Lidanoir about bringing their own lives to the screen, the importance of not reducing people to headlines, and the future they see for themselves.
Just a few weeks ago, her gentle feature film debut, meandering between cinéma vérité and rural fairytale, won Dongnan Chen the main prize at Copenhagen's renowned CPH:DOX film festival. Now the Chinese filmmaker continues her successful festival journey at Visions du Réel where her imaginative coping-of-age story about three young girls from the Yi minority screens in the Grand Angle section. On the festivals's busy main site, Dongnan Chen spoke with Lidanoir about the delicate balance between friction and reality in Whispers in May, finding the local girls who star in it, and her personal connection to its central themes of migration, social pressure, and generational responsibilities.